Detecting Unauthorized Use in Online Journal Archives: A Case Study

JSTOR is a not-for-profit online library containing a full back-run of digitized versions of a large number of academic journals. In order to help defray costs for maintaining the archive, subscribing institutions (such as libraries and universities) pay a fee to enable their users to access it. However, in order to make this access easy for authorized users--and to avoid requiring changes to the current IT infrastructure of their subscribing institutions--JSTOR authenticates users via the IP address of the computer that generated the request. (If the IP address belongs to a subscribing institution, the user is granted access.) This design decision introduces the potential for trouble: unauthorized users can access the archive if they can find an unprotected proxy machine at a subscribing institution and request material via that machine. (Observant archive staff have noticed abnormal usage patterns and traced them to such unauthorized use.) Unfortunately, this design decision also co...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: IADIS
• Authors: Paul Seligman, Sean W. Smith
• Keywords: Design Decision, IADIS 2004, IADIS 2008, IP Address, Not-for-profit Online Library